CS259 Formal Languages

Availability

Core - CS, CMS, DM

Note: This module is only available to students in the second year of their degree and is not available as an unusual option to students in other years of study.

Academic Aims

The module introduces methods used to describe and reason about formal languages (such as programming languages). It presents a classification of formal languages (Chomsky hierarchy) and techniques for locating languages within it (closure properties, pumping lemmas). Automata models corresponding to various levels of the Chomsky hierarchy are discussed along with the fundamental notion of computability. These concepts are central to computer science.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the module the student will be able to:

Specify formal languages.

Translate between various forms of formal language descriptions.

Argue that given formal languages are (or are not) regular or context-free.